广西桂平宋瓷窑

THE SONG PORCELAIN KILNS AT GUIPING,GUANGXI

桂平县位于广西壮族自治区东南部,郁江与黔江汇合于桂平县城的东部。宋瓷窑分布于桂平县城西部的西山大队一带。桂平窑址北临黔江,东靠城区,西至西山。

The Song porcelain kilns at Gulping County in Guangxi are distributed in the western su- burb of the county town over an area of about one square kilometers,and they are one of the im- portant kiln sites in the province.Two of the kilns have been cleared by the regional museum, Y-1 and Y-2. All the kilns in Gulping are long (dragon) kilns of the sloping type.The main body of Y-1 is well preserved.With a square head and a pointed mouth,it resembles a straight stick in shape. The top face,protection wall and fire chamber of the kiln are perfectly preserved.The greater part of the kiln bed still exists,but there is no entrance on either side of it.The smoke tunnel are on both sides of the top of the rear end of the kiln.The main body of the kiln is enveloped in an outer shell of mud. The bottoms of the beds of both Y-1 and Y-2 show signs of many times of repairing and re- building.The wall foundation beneath the bed of Y-1 bears traces that it was rebuilt,altered and repaired at least four times during its service period. The greater part of the remains of these kilns are potsherds and washers and mats.Their main products are bowls,plates,saucers,cups etc.and most of them are of plain procelain,and only a very small number of them are decorated with carved or incised floral designs.The pro- minent features of the products of the early period have wide flared mouths with thick rims and short ring feet;those of the middle period,wavy or thick round rims or straight rims and deep bellies;those of the late period,wide flared or decorated mouths or shallow body or me- lon-shaped bellies with incised or cut floral designs.They show clear signs of development. As copper coins of ‘Yu Fu Tong Bao’ and ‘Sheng Zong Yuan Bao’ were discovered in the top layer of deposit at Y-1,it is beyond doubt that the lower chronological limit of the kiln site is the late Northern Song Dynasty.Among the products of Y-2 are a kind of large bowls called bi di that were known to have been prevalent during the Five Dynasties,and it is there- fore evident that the upper chronological limit cannot be far from the period and is as roughly early as the early Northern Song.It is clear that Gulping kilns were built by order of Song Tai Zu (976—998) after the establishment of the Shipping Administration in Guangzhou for manufac- turing china ware for export.The findings from the excavation of these kilns are important ma- terial not only for studying the economy of Gulping and Guangxi during the Song Dynasty,but also for studying the export trade of Chinese ceamics during that dynasty.